On Birds, Blogs, and Books

Studio Notes

all things crochet

My eldest daughter returns to school this week, which opens up nap time again as an option to work on my business. I'm sad that this time with her is over, but I'm also excited to get back to work. Of course, new ideas are more appealing than half-finished ones, so I'll have to overcome that hurdle to finish my otter pattern. I don't love the arms or the legs. Hopefully, I'll figure that out soon!

I've also got a stack of library books to go along with a stack of blog post ideas. 135 library books at the time of this writing. Not all of those are for blog posts 😬 All I can say is thank God for libraries, I would be much poorer and much sadder without them! My husband and I are rewatching Stranger Things (no spoilers please!) And I had completely forgotten about this scene ⬇ "I need my paddles!!" And FIVE books at a time?! What kind of hell is that?!!

Nature

sightings and experiences

No notable nature sightings this week... ☹️

Gathered Things

annotated links and more discovered this week

But...

I was listening to this podcast, on choosing a single word as a focus and filter for your year. I'm choosing "trust." (I'll go more into that in a future post). But the host, Tracy Otsuka, was talking about making a major life decision and how birds played a role in it! Her relationship with birds sounds very similar to mine. That was really cool to hear about!

I really enjoy Tracy Durnell's Blog! I get all of her posts via RSS. I've been diving into her archives recently and I found this post on blogging helpful. Here are some points that she brought up that I'd like to remember for future: when a reaction or idea warrants a blog post, checking the about page of websites she references to do her due diligence, using bullet points to outline, continually rewriting headlines to focus, reflecting on what to share and what is too private, and not pulling too many quotes from the writer's work. Be sure to check this post out if you blog or are interested in blogging, it's insightful and well done!

I've been reading about AI quite a bit recently. I'd like to address that in a future post. It became too much to deal with in this weekly post. I envision writing a personal history with AI and how I am using it in my business. Because I am. But, I think it is very important to be transparent about when and why we use it. That's why this weekly note is coming out late. Although, I would anticipate these updates to be more weekly-ish than weekly. Thanks for reading!